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Conflikt was fun

Several of you who read my journal in whatever iteration already know this since you were actually there, but hey, Conflikt! That was fun.

This was the first year that solarbird and I got to attend the whole convention, which was nice. We still pulled a commuter con, which was not quite so ideal; next year, I think we’ll be getting a hotel room, just because driving all the way back to Kenmore at 2am or later is crazytalk. Especially when things like the Jury panels happen around 10:30 in the morning!

Dara did of course do more active music playing than I did since she has a CD in progress; me, I mostly hung out and beat on one of the novels in progress. And a nice lady I hadn’t met before even told me she quite liked Faerie Blood, to which I double-taked hugely, and was all ‘wait, a complete stranger actually read my novel? Whoa!’ (Nice Lady Who Read My Novel, if you’re reading this, I have forgotten your name and LJ, but if you drop a comment I shall make sure to note it again properly for the future!)

I did periodically also whip out Rags and do impromptu jamming near the registration table, which was also good fun. Special shout-outs on that are due to doragoon and Jeri Lynn who was managing the registration table, and whose LJ, if she has one, I do not know! We managed to play a not too bad little pass through “Si Bheag Si Mhor”, a song to which I am partial of course from its connection to Mr. Crowe and the Grunts. (Mmm, “Judas Cart”, I should listen to that again.)

Also participated in the Band Scramble, which let me meet a few nice folks and play music with them; we did “Elf Glade”, which is a standard at the Murkjams, and it was an interesting musical exercise to try to follow somebody else’s version of the guitar line. Also fun to try to invent piccolo twiddles on the fly since I never play flute on this thing at home.

The main attraction of the whole shebang was filkertom, though! Since my original exposure to filk was in the Midwest and my and Dara’s housemate at the time, amethyst_dancer, was an old college buddy of Tom’s, I’m real familiar with Tom and fond of his music quite a bit. He’s a superb musician, and I was very pleased to see that he hasn’t missed a step in live performance since I saw him last. His voice and guitar playing are both very strong, still! It was with great glee that I plunked down money for three, count ’em, three of his albums at the con–and furthermore picked up two more off of iTunes when I got home. Tom’s just that awesome.

Secondary highlight: seeing Alexander James Adams perform. I really want Alec to start writing more new stuff, just because as a long-standing Heather Alexander fan I have the original versions of a lot of his songs stuck in my brain and they don’t really want to be budged out by newer versions. He’s got a quite nice new vampire song though as well as a new one called “The Dance of Hoof and Horn”, and of course his fiddle playing is still sublime. Extra bonus points for Dara and I getting to sit near him in the big Sunday afternoon Jam, too. And I got to remind him of the incident in 1997 when he looked me in the eye at a room party and said “Play something!” and I squeaked and almost melted into the floor. Now? Now I can actually whip out a guitar and do something with it. He told me he was pleased to have inspired via terror. ;)

(Another shoutout to doragoon as well for whipping out that fiddle of hers and duo’ing with Alec on “Si Bheag Si Mhor”. Lovely and very well done!)

Alec has a work print of his next new album, so although it’s mostly reworked versions of Heather-era songs, I put down for that too since hey, again, awesomeness. And it may amuse damara as well that I bought a Heather Dale album–one of the CD vendors in the tiny dealer’s room had a whole bunch of her albums, so I got The Hidden Path and in fact listened to it tonight on the way home from work.

All in all a pleasant and relaxing way to spend the weekend. I may have been “hanging out on the periphery” girl for the most part, but it was a lovely periphery to be at. And “surrounded by musicians” is strangely conducive to getting actual writing done, not to mention guitar playing. <3 Looking forward to next year!
And maybe next year, I'll actually have a proper chord line to "How Many Hugos?", one of the few filk songs I've actually written. Not to mention, maybe I'll finish that Doctor Who filk still haunting my brain, and also have that shiny green guitar!

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Angela Korra'ti

As Angela Highland, Angela is the writer of the Rebels of Adalonia epic fantasy series with Carina Press. As Angela Korra'ti, she writes the Free Court of Seattle urban fantasy series. She's also an amateur musician and devoted fan of Newfoundland and Quebecois traditional music.
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